" BUT DELIVER US FROM EVIL."
This petition, with which the Son of God concludes this prayer, embodies the substance of all the rest. To mark its force and weight, praying on the eve of his passion for the salvation of mankind, he thus concluded: "I pray thou keep others. them from evil." [1] The force and efficacy of the other petitions, he, as it were, epitomized in this form of prayer, which he delivered by way of precept, and confirmed by example. If we obtain what is comprehended in this prayer, the protection of God against evil, that protection which enables us to defeat, with security and safety, the machinations of the world and the devil, we are fortified by the authority of St. Cyprian in affirming, that nothing more remains to be asked. [2]
Such, then, being the nature of this petition, the diligence of the pastor in its exposition should be commensurate to its importance. The difference between it and the preceding petition consists in this, that in the one we beg to avoid sin, in the other, to escape punishment. It cannot, therefore, be necessary to remind the faithful of the numerous evils and calamities to which we are exposed, and how much we stand in need of the divine petition; assistance. The picture of our misery has been drawn in lively colours by sacred and profane writers; but the dangers which beset himself and others have given each one a melancholy experience of the number and magnitude of the miseries incidental to human life. We are all convinced of the truth of these words of holy Job, which was exemplified in his own sufferings: " Man, born of woman, and living for a short time, is filled with many miseries. He cometh forth like a flower, and is destroyed, and fleeth as a shadow, and never continueth in the same state." [3] That no day passes without its own trouble or inconvenience is evinced by these words of our Lord: "Sufficient for the day is the evil thereof;" [4] and indeed, the condition of human life is pointed out by our Lord himself, when he admonishes us, that we are to take up our cross daily, and follow him. [5]
Feeling, therefore, as every one must, the labours and dangers inseparable from human life, it will not be difficult to convince them, that to implore of God deliverance from evil is an imperative duty: a duty to the performance of which they will be the more easily induced, as no motive exercises a more powerful influence on human action than a desire and hope of deliverance from those evils, which oppress, or impend over them. To fly to God for assistance in distress is a principle implanted in the human mind by the hand of nature; as it is written, "Fill their faces with shame, and they shall seek thy name, O Lord." [6]
